te the
character and opens out countless tastes and spheres of enjoyment. It
saves its possessor from the fear of a destitute old age and of the
destitution of those he may leave behind, which is the harrowing care of
multitudes who cannot be reckoned among the very poor. It enables him to
intermit labour in times of sickness and sorrow and old age, and in
those extremes of heat and cold during which active labour is little
less than physical pain. It gives him and it gives those he loves
increased chances of life and increased hope of recovery in sickness.
Few of the pains of penury are more acute than those of a poor man who
sees his wife or children withering away through disease, and who knows
or believes that better food or medical attendance, or a surgical
operation, or a change of climate, might have saved them. Money, too,
even when it does not dispense with work, at least gives a choice of
work and longer intervals of leisure. For the very poor this choice
hardly exists, or exists only within very narrow limits, and from want
of culture or want of leisure some of their most marked natural
aptitudes are never called into exercise. With the comparatively rich
this is not the case. Money enables them to select the course of life
which is congenial to their tastes and most suited to their natural
talents, or, if their strongest taste cannot become their work, money at
least gives them some leisure to cultivate it. The command of leisure,
when it is fruitful leisure spent in congenial work, is to many,
perhaps, the greatest boon it can bestow. 'Riches,' said Charles Lamb,
'are chiefly good because they give us Time.' 'All one's time to
oneself! for which alone I rankle with envy at the rich. Books are good
and pictures are good, and money to buy them is therefore good--but to
buy time--in other words, life!'

To some men money is chiefly valuable because it makes it possible for
them not to think of money. Except in the daily regulation of ordinary
life, it enables them to put aside cares which are to them both
harassing and distasteful, and to concentrate their thoughts and
energies on other objects. An assured competence also, however moderate,
gives men the priceless blessing of independence. There are walks of
life, there are fields of ambition, there are classes of employments in
which between inadequate remuneration and the pressure of want on the
one side, and the facilities and temptations to illicit gain on